The headline was bigger this time, under a partially blurred photograph of a pair of frightened old ladies. For the second time in a month their home had been entered and this time the women had been bound, their mouths taped shut, and kept unceremoniously on the kitchen floor while the intruders went about systematically tearing their house apart. Apparently they found nothing. Neighbors reported that street speculation assumed the DiCica woman to have a horde of cash in the house since the ladies lived so frugally.
Before I could say anything, Petey keyed the console and grinned. “Don’t ask me how I got this.” It was a copy of a bank statement. The amount was over three hundred thousand dollars, all in the name of Maria DiCica. Deposits were regular and automatic from several sources. “Our boy Anthony had set his old mother up in fine fashion. So, what were the houses being burglarized for and who did it?” He sat back and looked at me. “Or should I ask?”
“I can give you an off-the-record opinion, Petey, but that will have to do for now.”
“Good enough.”
“DiCica had some devastating information on the mob. He hid it somewhere before he was clobbered.”
With a look of finality, Petey shut the console down. “End of case. It died with Anthony.”
“The hell it did,” I said. “Somebody in the organization thinks DiCica suddenly remembered and dropped his secret on me.”
“Brother!”
“So if it dies, it’ll die with me.”
“Only you’re not dead yet?”
“Not by a long damn sight.”
“But they got pressure on you, I take it?”
I nodded. “The bastards as much as said it was my ass if I don’t produce.”
“Shake you up?”
“I’ve been in the business too long, kiddo. I just get more cautious and keep my .45 on half cock.”
He watched me frowning, grouping his thoughts. “That mutilation of DiCica could have been a message to you then.”
“It’s beginning to look like it,” I said.
“What do you do now?”
“See how far I can go before I touch a tripwire.”
“You don’t give a damn, do you?” he said.
“About what?”
“Anything at all. You don’t want any backup, no protection ... you want to be out there all alone like a first-class idiotic target.”
I shrugged.
“
There’s a lot more of them than there are of you, kiddo.” I watched him and waited. He finally said, “They know how you are, Mike. You’re leaving yourself wide open.”
I felt that tight grin stretch my lips and said, “That’s the tripwire I set out.”
When she answered the phone, I said, “Would you really like to be president?”
There were three seconds of quiet and I knew she was studying the way I had said every word.
“There are a lot of obstacles on that road.”
“I think I can clear a few of them out.”
“How?”
I looked at my watch. “I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes.”
All I had to do was walk around the comer and I made it in five. The doorman nodded, called Candace’s apartment, then told me to go up. As I expected, I caught her in the middle of getting ready, obviously flustered at being half-dressed.
“You’re a real bastard,” she said. “Come on in.”
I tossed my hat on a chair and followed her into the living room. She walked against the light and for a brief moment her naked body was silhouetted through the fabric of her housecoat and she did a half turn, looking back at me impishly, and I knew she was well aware of what she was doing.
“Like?” she asked.
“Cute.”
“Just cute?”
“Kiddo, you are one helluva broad, as they used to say.”
“Oh?”
“Especially in the buff.”
“But you’ve only seen me once in the buff.”
“It made an impression then too.” I grinned at her. “Now go finish dressing.”
“That I will do, believe me.” She held out her hand and took mine. “You, Mike, are going to sit and watch and tell me all about the presidency.” Without any hesitation, she led me toward the bedroom, ushered me in and pointed to a satin-covered chair next to her vanity. “And, of course, you are going to be a gentleman. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Certainly.” She was playing my game right back at me and my voice sounded hoarse. I sat down, but I wasn’t comfortable.
Women are born clever. They begin life as little girls who have an instinct base that turns little boys inside out. They never seem to lose any of it, just getting better every day. They can comb their hair or put on lipstick in a way to make any guy feel a sultry ache in his groin, and now I had to watch her sitting there, deliberately opening the housecoat around her shoulders, letting it slide down to her elbows so that it lay across the fullness of her breasts, seeming to balance on her nipples. She studied herself in the mirror, her tongue licking out to wet those luscious lips before she touched them with a feathery brush end.
Her reflected glance met mine. “You were saying?”
“The police have been pulled off the Penta case.”
“Our office was notified.” She did the trick with her tongue again.
“If you ... and I mean you personally . . . suddenly came up with something very explosive that would put you in the headlines even bigger than you expected when you busted into this affair ...”
Her eyes held mine again.
“It’s another step up. The DA’s office is next.”
She took the hairbrush now, running it through the blond silkiness. It made a quiet, snaky sound and the muscles played very gently under her skin with the movement of her arm. The back of the housecoat slid down almost to her waist.
“Your office isn’t the police department. It’s still an investigative agency if it chooses to be.”
Her eyebrows arched an affirmative and she put the hairbrush down on the vanity, studied herself again and stretched herself, arms out, fingers splayed in an odd theatrical gesture. She crossed one leg over the other, the gown falling away carelessly, leaving one side nude to the hip.
I said, “You have the intellect and the machinery to do something I need and do it fast. The cops have snitches out there you can reach if you play your cards right. Most likely you already have programs in place you can tap for the information I want.”
She seemed to glide around on her seat until she faced me, the movement an instinctive feminine device that shocked a man’s nerve endings, making me feel as if I were giving up to a slow drowning. Then a survival instinct jerked me back and I watched while she folded her hands in her lap, the motion letting the housecoat fall all the way, so she sat there, seemingly unconscious of the fact that the lovely swells of her naked breasts were mine to see.
She smiled and I said, “You’re a pretty beastie, lady.”
“Are you disturbed?”
“Not that much.”
“You lie, Mike.”
“Nicely, I hope.”
“Yes. Very nicely. Now, what is it you want of me?”
“Something has our local organized crime group bent out of shape. It’s big enough to squash them if it gets out and big enough to kill for to keep it quiet.”
She said, “You’d better explain.”
“It started with Anthony DiCica,” I told her, then laid the details out for her one by one. She let me finish without saying a word and when I got to the end she unconsciously pulled the robe up around her again, frowning in thought.
She tilted her head at me, her eyes carefully shrouded. “No games?”
“Straight, kid.”
“I’m simply an assistant district attorney.”
“Nevertheless, you have the clout. Your boss has enough on his desk to keep him busy. All he wants is to get into court anyway. The legwork isn’t his speed.”
Candace nodded and asked, “Will Captain Chambers cooperate?”
“Why not? Interagency cooperation isn’t active participation. He’d like to screw that State Department patsy anyway.”
“Oh, Bennett Bradley is all right. He’s pretty disappointed at not having found Penta after all these years. When all of a sudden the name showed up here... well, you can imagine how he feels, especially with a replacement for him due.”
“Well, hell, he doesn’t give a damn what we do about DiCica anyway. All he wants is one last clear shot at this Penta character. When can you get things started?”
She got to her feet before I could and smiled down at me. “The first thing in the morning, Mike.”
Her tongue made her lips wet and she held out her hands and when I took them, she pulled gently and I stood up, feeling her fingers kneading my shoulders.
“Where do people like you come from, Mike?”
“Why?”
Girls can do strange things with their clothes too. With barely a movement, everything can suddenly fall away and they are naked and bare and nude all at once, the poutiness of their flesh pressing against your clothes like a hot iron, and they can squeeze themselves into the forbidden areas of your body the way water follows the contours of the earth.
Her mouth was soft, warm lips so cushiony and alive, feeling and tasting that it was like a kiss within a kiss. I enjoyed the flavor of her, the pillowed sensation of being enfolded by nakedness, and when it got too much, I pushed her away gently.
I knew what the look in her eyes meant. I knew what her smile meant. I grinned at her and took my lumps because she was getting back at me for the last time.
“You’re the real bastard,” I said.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Uh-huh.” I took a long look at her standing there, soft, sensual musculature that was never motionless, the light outlining the gentle ripples of her body.
“Think we can start over?” I asked her.
She smiled. There was a glint in her eyes. “Why not?” she said.
I got my hat from the chair and got out of there. Downstairs there was a chill in the air and New York was getting that funny smell back again.
8
I had the cabbie drop me at the corner and picked up a late evening paper from the kiosk. There was a mist in the air and the streetlights had a soft glow around them, and lighted windows in the apartments were gently blurred. It was the kind of night that dampened street sounds and put a dull slick on the pavement.
The doorman at my place generally paced under the marquee, but tonight I couldn’t blame him for staying inside. I hugged the side of the building out of the wind, moved around the garbage pails outside the areaway that ran to the rear and saw the feet inside the glass doors as the guy jumped me from behind.
Damn. The second time.
One arm had me around the throat and a fist was ready to slam into my kidneys, but I was twisting and dropping at the same time, so fast the fucker lost his rhythm and went down with me. His arm came loose and he rolled free, and I forgot all about him because the other one had come out of the hallway with a sap in his hand ready to lay my skull open. I let the swing go past my face and threw a right smack into his nose, saw his head snap back, then put another one into his gut.
This time everything was working right. The guy behind me came off the sidewalk thinking he had me nailed. I didn’t want any broken knuckles. I just drove my fist into his neck under his chin and didn’t wait to see what would happen. The boy with the sap was still standing there, nose-stunned, blood all over his face, but not out of it at all.
You don’t have to waste skin on guys like that at all. I kicked him in the balls and the pain-instinct reaction was so fast he nearly locked onto my foot. His mouth made silent screaming motions and he went down on his knees, his supper foaming out of his mouth.
The doorman was just coming out of it, a lump already growing on the side of his head. “Can you hear me, Jeff?”
He grimaced, his eyes opened and he nodded. “That bastard ...”
“I have them outside. You give the cops a call.”
“Yeah. Damn right.”
The big guy I had rapped in the throat was trying to get away. He was on all fours scratching toward the car at the curb. I took out the .45, let him hear me jack a shell into the chamber and he stopped cold. That old army automatic can have a deadly sound to it. I walked over to him, knelt down and poked the muzzle against his head.
“Who sent you?”
He shook his head.
I thumbed the hammer back. That sound, the double click, was even deadlier.
“We ... was to ... rough you up.” His voice was hardly understandable.
“Who sent you?”
His head dropped, spit ran out of his mouth and he shook his head again.
Hell, neither one of them would know anything. Somebody had hired a pair of goons to lay on me, but they would sure have something to say to me about it.
“Why?” I asked him. I kept the tone nasty. I rubbed the gun harder against his temple.
All the big slob had in his eyes was fear. “You sent . . . the guys... a bullet.”
I heard the siren of a squad car coming up Third Avenue. “How much did they pay you?”
“Five hundred... each.”
“Asshole,” I said. I eased the hammer back on half-cock and took the rod away from his head. A grand for a mugging meant the victim would be wary and dangerous and these two slobs never gave it a thought. I gave him a kick in the side and told him to get over beside his buddy. I didn’t have to tell him twice.
Wheels squealing, a car turned at the corner and the floodlight hit me while it was still moving. The cameraman came out, rolling videotape, a girl in a flapping trenchcoat right behind him, giving a rapid, detailed description of what was going on into a hand mike, and I even let New York City’s own favorite on-the-spot TV team catch me giving the guy another boot just for the hell of it.
When the squad car got there I identified myself, gave my statement and let the doorman fill in the rest. The two guys had waited near the curb nearly an hour, spotted me at the corner, then one came in, grabbed the doorman, waited until the other jumped me and laid a sap on the doorman’s head before joining the fun. Luckily, the sweatband of his uniform cap softened the blow. Both the clowns had knives in their pockets along with the old standby brass knuckles and a blackjack. It took one radio call to get an ID on them and they were shoved, handcuffed, into the rear of the car.